Today we're going to look at an ancient drill as old as the art of snowboard carving itself.

But even in modern times this drill has many applications.

It's the fastest way to get aspiring carvers high up on their edge.

It has also helped many experienced carvers perfect their initiation and it's the foundation of the carve 360.

This is the J-turn.

Watch head check.

Toe side position.

Bang.

We're carving just like that.

This one we're going to slow down a little bit.

Drop into that toe side position.

I want you to look at the patience in this turn.

Look how stable my body position is relative to my board throughout almost the entirety of this turn.

See that?

Drop in the position and just hold it.

Be patient.

One more for good measure.

Up in the fluff.

Finish it off with a flat spin.

Let's look at some heel sides.

Ready position.

Heel side position.

J-turn.

Here we're going to look again at that patience part.

See how my body is super stable relative to my board through the whole turn.

Right to the end.

Last one for good measure.

And heel side.

J-turn.

Whoa.

All right.

Okay.

J-turn.

First we're going to look at why we do the J-turn.

Then we're going to look at how we do the J-turn including a tip on how to take that 180 degree J-turn into a 270 and eventually a 360 degree carve which looks awesome and feels amazing.

Finally we're going to look at a couple of my own failed J-turns and see what went wrong so we can begin to assess what kinds of mistakes you might be making and how to address them before you learn bad habits.

The J-turn is actually a beginner carver exercise that dates back to the 80s or 90s but it's also a very effective exercise for experienced carvers who are having trouble in the transition.

As they initiate finish one turn initiate the next turn they're very often just kicking their board and just scrubbing a little bit of speed and you know reorienting and it's a bad habit.

We want a smooth transition so the board you know comes from the edge flat and back up on edge without any pivot.

Okay.

So the J-turn teaches people who otherwise are good carvers but just have a little trouble with that initiation how to just kick their board up, angulate high and carve.

It's going to teach you what it feels like when you kick that board way up how the board's going to react to subtle changes in your body position and your movements and you need to know that not just mentally know it but your body has to learn how to control the board when it's so high on edge and the J-turn is excellent for that purpose.

And also the J-turn as I said is the foundation for the 360 there you know when I come in straight for a 360 it's basically a J-turn with a very thin track maintaining a lot of speed so I can keep carving around as far as possible.

So you know I didn't want to call this video how to carve a 360 part one because I don't want to be feeding you clickbait but the how to carve a 360 video is coming soon.

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Okay and the last reason why we do the J-turn is pretty much just to slow things down isolate the turn be safer and learned that body position without all the intensity.

So for example right if this is a regular S-turn when I make this transition okay and now I'm on angulating I'm on the edge what's happening through this part of the turn I'm accelerating I'm fully committed I am barreling straight towards the side of the run here and it can be very intense right and the edge pressure builds through the patience part of the turn and then finally I start to decelerate and now you know maybe there's a bump coming maybe I have to do a head check it's just all a lot of things coming at you at once by doing a J-turn okay as soon as we initiate right around here we're already starting to decelerate so it just slows things down calms things out we take it one turn at a time and we can do you know one focusing on the knees then followed by one focusing on the hips and one focusing on the shoulders and your body will learn much more quickly how to adjust these movements how your board's going to react when it's high up on edge like that and this is going to help you progress much faster into these types of carves okay so this is uh well backwards but this is the shape of a J what I would like you to do is just come up and finish your turn just like that heading straight uphill when you're ready when your track is thin you're feeling confident try to push that into 270 see what you can do and eventually into a full 360 or even more uh if you have to finish with a flat spin finish with the tailspin it doesn't really matter all this is going to help you progress towards that 360 carve let's uh let's go to the crack house and let's look at the three body positions and how we transition between them okay welcome to the crack house so named for the wood cracks in the corners not for that other thing uh we're looking at the J turn today I'm going to demonstrate three positions the ready position the heel side position and the toe side position and we'll talk a little bit about how to get from the ready position to the heel side or to the toe side and I'm going to remind you about the head checks too super important let's look first at the ready position so I'm in my stance my knees are bent my hips are facing the front of the board my hands are over the front of the board just a little bit ahead of my front toes because I want to be leaning a little forward on initiation okay uh and that's it we're bending hips forward shoulders forward holding your tray don't spill that tray remember you're you're imagine you're holding a tray with your beer you want to get to the bottom without spilling that beer so whatever else you do with your body that tray must remain level that's the ready position very easy you know come from boom into that by twisting at the hips bring those shoulders to face the front of the board now we're going to drop into the heel side position first okay um we're going to focus on three body parts while we're doing this the knees are going to go this direction the hips are going to thrust forward and twist a little bit and the shoulders are going to remain level so this is what it looks like basically I'm just almost like you're sitting in a chair boom just like that now okay so if you watch the video on the hill you're not going to see this exaggerated knee motion you're not going to see this exaggerated twist that's why I took the board off I wasn't able to demonstrate in my very stiff setup but it's very but I am pressuring the knees in that direction and I am twisting at the hips and at the shoulders the whole body twists as I down in that heel side position the reason in the video you see my hand stays my back hand stays over my front toes pretty much through the whole turn is because as I make that twist the board is also turning okay but I'm driving that board into the turn with the hips with the shoulders with that back hand and I'm keeping the shoulders level by stretching in the front obliques and crunching in the rear obliques I can feel that crunch right here that's what's important to keep those shoulders level one more time on heel side ready position hips forward boom just like that now toe side ready position is identical head check do not forget the head check I know a lot of carvers who have been badly injured please do your head checks you may have the right away but uh those guys may not care ready position all set boom okay this time the knees drop that direction into the corner into the turn but slightly rearward towards the tail of your board the hips come forward even more exaggerated remember we talked about steering with your dick this is it thrust those hips forward into the turn and we're going to twist them this movement is always the same you keep those shoulders level keep the tray level okay to achieve this when my board is so extremely angulated I need to stretch on the toe side in the rear obliques and crunch over in the front obliques there it is one more time ready position toe side position ready position toe side position just like that knees go in this direction hips thrusting twisting shoulders always level one more thing I want to mention while I'm here is how to take this 180 j turn and start to push it towards 270 and eventually 360.

The trick is going to be in the fore aft motion in the basic j turn I just want you to focus on these motions I want to simplify it get you used to being high up on your edge see how the board reacts see what you have to do to maintain control of your board when it's so high on edge once you get better at it and you want to turn that 180 into a 270 and eventually a 360 the trick is going to be to move your weight backwards through the turn so we start forward remain forward as you make that drop but as you move through the turn come back more weight on the back foot less weight on the front foot and that's going to help you to carve the tail of your board at the end of the turn which doesn't require as much speed so just a small tip to get you into that 270 mark the actual how to carve a 360 video is coming later anything else found it we're done boom okay we're learning today the toe side j turn the tray is meant to keep your shoulders level while you drop your knees so go ahead and drop your knees and don't spill that water okay can you get up so after working on the analysis of these two failed j turns I began to realize that it was getting a little too technical and probably a little too boring for most of you so I took all that out instead I'm just going to put a clip of each in slow-mo and we're going to call it an extra credit assignment analyze them if you like and see if you can see the subtle differences between these two failed turns and all the successful turns that went before put it in the comments let's talk about it thanks for watching I appreciate your support and I hope you like the video share subscribe like comment all that stuff blah blah blah but in truth the fact of the matter is it's one of my goals for this season to grow my subscribership on youtube so you'd be doing me a solid what follows here are a whole bunch of clips of Evelyn attempting the toe side j turn back from that same day when we were working on dry land there in the living room I think it's hilarious the comedy is really in just the sheer number of clips that we have from that day quick heads up risers are coming soon I'm going to have 50 sets delivered to my house within 48 hours they'll be up for sale on the store within the week these are risers of my own design manufactured locally with help from engineers and feedback and input from the king of modern riser design the man himself JCJ Anderson only 50 sets in this first batch there will be more batches but uh 50 to start also a reminder there are still four exeggy double wide boards left in the store I know a lot of you are holding out for those JJ AC4s but there just aren't going to be enough to go around so your best bet getting a wide directional carving board right now for this season is the exeggy double wide at carversconnection.com what we got here is a couple early attempts to carve the CC logo I think I was getting close but actually the animation was way better whoa